The Healer
by TheBucketWoman
Summary: A newly discovered power causes a particular dilemma for Justin Russo.
1. Chapter 1

The Healer

by TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I do not own _Wizards of Waverly Place_ or anything else I reference herein. All real locations are used fictitiously. No profit is being made and no infringement intended.

A/N: Rated T, mainly for language.

Chapter One.

1.

As a rule, and contrary to what pretty much anyone would expect, Alex Russo did not have a pottymouth. She made exceptions, when she grabbed the handle of a frying pan for example, or when Kelbo's birthday chicken bit her.

Therefore, it wasn't that unreasonable for her to curse like the spirit child of Eminem and Kevin Smith when she stepped wrong and fell on the spiral stairs, breaking her ankle.

"Son of a fucking bitch OWWW!" she gasped. Good thing, too, because her mother might actually burst into flames if she'd heard that. The idea that neither Teresa nor Jerry Russo would begrudge their daughter some good old fashioned off-color catharsis in situations such as this would never occur to her, nor would she believe it if anyone told her.

_OhGodOhGodOhGod_, she thought, twisting to see the damage, and just the tiny shifting movement was boiling lava bikini wax agony. Even the change in the air was enough to get her screaming.

And yeah, there it was, clearly broken, purple and swelling right before her eyes. Like the way bread baked in TV commercials. Stupid cheap fucking dollar-store flip-flops. If she survived this pain, she was going back to that store, if she had to be wheeled there, just so she could take one and hit the guy behind the counter. It was his fault she was writhing on the cold dusty floor when all she wanted was some leftover empanadas.

2.

If Alex cursed rarely, Justin cursed not at all. Or at least he never _had_. He could, however, always be called upon to ask what in the Helsinki was going on, or to insist that the F in WTF really stood for fish tacos (and his little brother Max still believed that this was true, of course). That said, the first thing out of his mouth when he saw his little sister screaming and writhing on the floor was a proper, classic "What the Fuck." Alex didn't seem to notice this of course, though Justin would be sure that she would've eaten it up any other day.

He came down the stairs as fast as he could and actually had had to hop over his sister to get to the bottom. By the time he got there, her screams reached a decibel level and frequency that bit at his nerves like hungry baby alligators.

"Alex," he tried to say calmly as he knelt down next to her. It came out watery and panicked and she gave no sign of having heard, wrapped up as she was in increasingly operatic screams.

"ALEX, SHUT UP!" he yelled. "Shut the fuck up and let me help!"

"Don't touch me!"

"Alex," he said. "Hold still."

"No."

"Come on, let me shift you—"

"NO!"

"Hold still," he said. He sounded impressively calm, if he did say so himself. "Let me see."

"No, it hurts."

"I know," he said. "Let me see, though. I got you." He took hold of her calf.

"Let me see," he repeated, holding her still spasming leg.

3.

The pain lessened.

"What..." she said.

"I got you," he said again.

"But..."

"It's kinda swollen," he said. "I'll get some ice and—"

"It's _broken_."

"It's _not_ broken," he said.

"It is!" she said, gesturing to it and pointing at the spot where she'd seen the bones looking all pokey-outey and saw little of what she'd seen a minute or so before. The ankle was still purple and swollen but not as swollen, and it hurt, but not as much.

"What'd you do?" she asked.

"Huh?"

"What did you _do_?" she repeated. "It was _broken_!"

"Don't be a drama queen," he said. "Let's get you to the ER, though. Maybe you saw something I didn't."

But, sure enough, after twelve years of waiting in the ER, the doctor had wrapped her in a bandage and sent her on her way.

So maybe she had imagined that it was broken. Whatever.

Six months later, though, she thought of it again and was sure that she hadn't imagined anything.

It was snowing, and New York City schools only closed if the snow came up to the top of the buses, so Alex, Harper, and Max had to deal with the always fun trek home in the ice and the lip-cracking wind, the snow actually _accumulating_ on top of their heads, passing cars sending up hunks of snow, weighing their already wet jeans down just a little bit more.

Harper's hat had bells on it, so every time she shook her head, it was like Santa was coming up Varick Street a few weeks early and after two blocks, Alex really hoped that the bell would rust from all the wet. By the time Varick turned into 7th Avenue South, Alex was looking for distractions so that she wouldn't take the thing and throw it into the street.

"Hey Max," Alex said.

"Yo."

"You know that yellow snow over there?" she asked. "It's lemon-flavored."

"Think I'm falling for that again?" Max asked.

Harper stopped in her tracks and looked at Alex reproachfully.

"What?" Alex said. "It didn't let him _eat_ it." Harper shook her head, starting that maddening ding-a-linging all over again.

"I don't know why I'm even surprised at this point," Harper said.

"Uh-huh," Alex said. "Hold that thought." She turned and zapped the snowball that zoomed towards her head back at Max, where it hit him full in the face.

"Man!" Max said, after he was done sputtering. Back to the drawing board for him. One of these days he'd realize that he was bigger than she was and could just pin her down if he wanted to, but for now, he was happily oblivious.

But he had really good aim and better reflexes than she did, and he actually hit her with the next shot.

"You just wait till we get home," Alex said, through gritted teeth as Harper high-fived Max.

Harper giggled.

"Yeah, well _you_ better sleep with one eye open, too," Alex told Harper.

"I usually do," Harper said.

There was a silencing spell somewhere in the book, Alex was sure of it. Her dad had lately kept it out of her reach for fear that she'd learn some nasty stuff to use on her brothers, but she didn't see how anyone would fault her for wanting to shut that infernal bell up.

Alex had never been so glad to see Christopher Street. That guy, Barry or Larry was outside, playing with his two big Afghan hounds, Marcello and Cupcake, in the snow. She saw them everyday and they never failed to slobber on her and Harper and absolutely never missed an opportunity to pounce on Max.

"Oof!" Max wheezed. "Marcello!" While he was on the ground, he gathered up some snow with one hand and threw it. Marcello leapt off of him and ran after it, wondering where it went when it hit a parked car and disintegrated. The dog's head whipped from side to side, like _Where'd it go?_ This made Alex wonder how on earth Max managed to find the one creature on this planet more oblivious than him. But it was too cold to stand there and think it over. She left Max and Harper to frolic with Marcello and Cupcake all they wanted; she was going someplace _warm_.

Shortly after she passed that little pink stucco frosting house on Waverly, Max and Harper rejoined her.

"Come here, little bro," Alex said. She held out her arms for a hug. Max, who had no survival instinct, did what he was told, getting some ice shoved down the back of his collar for his trouble.

"You're so dead," Max said, chasing her, or trying to; climbing through the knee deep slush on the sidewalk slowed him down a little.

And Justin, sitting in the mostly empty sub-shop, grinned at the two of them smugly when they came within view. _He_ was warm. The windows of the shop were slightly steamed.

_Asshole_, she thought. He was _so_ getting his face washed in snow, _A Christmas Story_ style. Or maybe she could wait until he went to sleep to sneak downstairs and fill a couple of Chinese takeout soup containers with snow and bring them up to his room...

But first, she wondered if she could get Max to stick his tongue to a flagpole. Again. Thinking about all this, she hadn't seen at first when Max stepped out into the street, which looked pretty clear. That was one good thing about living in NYC. They plowed early and often, which was why they usually had school when most people didn't.

But sometimes it was still hard for the city to control the black ice. Which caused a slightly overconfident Hyundai driver to see the supposedly clear street and speed up a little, only to lose control, missing Alex by millimeters as she screamed and fell, whacking her shoulder and her back a little on a newspaper box on the way down, but mostly landing safely in a slushpile.

Max wasn't as lucky.

Alex hadn't seen him actually get hit, but once she sat up, she saw him bleeding and unconscious on the ground and she saw Justin run out, wearing only a Dark Tower t-shirt and jeans. _O Discordia,_ the shirt said. His skin turned red immediately, and Alex found it easier to watch that happen than to look at the blood and what might have been some of her little brother's hair in the snow a little too far from his actual head.

The driver threw up. He stood outside his open door, with his cell phone in his hand and he'd either been using it while he was supposed to be driving or he just took it out to call for help, but he was too busy puking to use it. He was about her dad's age, maybe a little younger.

Justin didn't seem to notice how cold it was. He got down on his knees in the snow, leaning over Max while at least one nearby mom blocked her daughter's view by smooshing the kid's face into her coat.

Somebody or other called 911. Maybe Harper. Alex should have, but she was having a little trouble speaking at the moment. And breathing. Breathing was hard, too.

She couldn't look at Max's face, afraid of what she'd see. There might be gore. Or there might be nothing. No Max.

"What do we do?" Harper fretted, kneeling by Justin and finally whipping that stupid hat off her head so she could concentrate.

"Breathing," Justin was saying. "He's breathing."

"Don't move him!" somebody said.

"We can't move him," Harper agreed.

"No," Justin said. He had his hand on Max's arm, like he was afraid to touch anything else. Alex was still studiously avoiding looking at Max's face, to the point where she put one hand up near her eye to block her vision.

By this time, their parents had made their way outside and the screaming got to be widespread. Or maybe it was sirens. Or both. Probably both.

Alex really wasn't the best witness. One would think that an artist would be more observant, but she kept noticing all the wrong things, like Harper's rain boots with the ducks on them. And how Harper's hair started out all staticky when she took the hat off, but then got wet and laid down again. Alex didn't even _see_ the paramedics until they started talking to her and touching her face.

"Get _off_!" she said.

Some other ones loaded Max onto a stretcher, using all the stuff, because they were really scared to move him. The backboard, that stiff collar. Everything. Oxygen...

"Look over here, _mami_," the paramedic was saying, flashing a light in her eyes.

"Quit it," Alex said, slapping the flashlight out of his hand.

"Can you get up?" he asked.

Crap. She was still on the ground, her whole back was wet. Or wetter. But she got up, shaking the paramedic guy off.

"I'm okay," she said.

"You need to let them check you out," Harper said.

"No," Alex said. "I just wanna—" She didn't really know what she wanted, actually. Somebody put a blanket on Justin. Mom had her arms around him, sort of rubbing his arms. His ears were a really dark red and his hair was as full of snow as Max's had been. Before.

"In the ambulance," Dad said suddenly. She hadn't even seen him come over. "Now." So she got into the other one. They wouldn't let either of them in with Max, but Dad rode shotgun in her ambulance.

Mom met them there, with Harper and Justin, who had a coat on when Alex saw him again. The doctors had decided that she was more or less okay, and let her go sit with them. Dad stayed with Max. Or as near as they'd let him stay. They probably might have let Alex go stay by her dad, too, but she couldn't look at her brother like that, and she couldn't be around the beeping and hissing of the machines, either. It was too easy to imagine one of the beeps solidifying into a big long Beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee-

So that was out.

It was hard to sit down, and once she did, hard to get settled. Mom took her coat off and rolled it into a makeshift cushion for her, but it still hurt like hell. If nobody else had gotten hurt, she would have milked these bumps and bruises for all they were worth ("But, Mom! I _can't_ do homework! My back hurts!" She would have said. "Also, Justin should take my shift!") but right then, she tried not to acknowledge them at all. Harper sat next to Alex and finger-combed her hair, just to have something to do with her hands. Alex supposed she should stop her friend before she wove her hair into a basket or something, but at that moment, the headstroking was soothing.

"Who wants cocoa?" Mom wanted to know. Nobody said anything, but she went and got some anyway. Alex liked holding it at least. Seemed like Justin did, too. Harper managed a sip or two of hers.

"_Toma_, _papi_," she told Justin. He shook his head. "It'll warm you up." He shook like he was still outside in twenty degree weather and no coat, though by this point he was bundled up tighter than Kenny on South Park.

Alex wasn't sure how long it took for her Dad to come out and talk to them. She'd gotten half absorbed in one of the _Law and Orders_, with that guy from_ Scream _who looked like Johnny Depp when Dad came over.

"He woke up for a little bit," Dad said. Mom burst into screamy tears and buried her head in Dad's chest. Justin put his head between his knees, like he was going to pass out. Alex wondered how he could bend over that far in his bubble coat.

"They're gonna keep him," Dad continued, "but he woke up and talked to me, and answered questions and squeezed the doctor's hands."

That did not seem possible. As much as Alex wanted it, she didn't think it was really happening. That much blood—

"The blood," Justin whispered. It was the first thing he'd said in a couple hours.

"Yeah," Dad said. "In your head there's lots of veins and stuff close to the skin. You cut it and it bleeds like crazy, so it must've looked pretty scary, but—"

"No," Alex said.

"No," Justin said.

"Thank God," Mom said, grabbing Justin and kissing the top of his head with an audible smack. Then she moved on to Harper and Alex, to do the same.

"You're still all wet," she muttered. "Both of you! You'll catch pneumonia!"

"Mom!" Alex said.

"Anyway, there's a concussion, a pretty bad one," Dad said. "They want to monitor that for a day or two at the very least. And his leg's broken. But it looked worse than it was."

"You did this," Alex told Justin. He startled, like she'd slapped him.

"What?" Justin asked. "I—"

"Alex!" Mom said, shocked.

Harper looked around nervously. "Alex..."

"You _did_," Alex said. "You saved him!"

"_Saved_ him?" Mom asked. "I thought you were saying—"

"Alex, honey, that doesn't happen," Dad said. "Ever."

"No!" Alex said, keeping her voice low. "He did it. He healed him. Like my ankle that time."

"N-n-no," Justin said. "I can't..."

"But what if you can?" Alex asked.

"I can't," Justin said. "I didn't."

But Alex was sure that he could and he did.

**TBC**


	2. Chapter 2

The Healer

by TheBucketWoman

Disclaimer: I do not own _Wizards of Waverly Place_ or anything else I reference herein. All real locations are used fictitiously. No profit is being made and no infringement intended.

Chapter Two

4.

Jerry called a cab and sent Teresa home with the kids, then he went back to see Max who, though awake, was pretty blotto. They were waiting on a room for him. Meanwhile, there was a little TV bolted to the wall and Max stared at the _House M.D_. rerun , his eyes drooping.

"We're not at that hospital, are we?" Max asked. "That guy's an _idiot_."

Jerry smiled. Typical Max question. "Naw, that one's all the way in _Jersey,_" he teased. "We'd _still_ be in traffic if we were going there."

"This one's okay, right?" Max asked.

"Oh yeah," Jerry said. It wasn't St. Vincent's but you couldn't win em all. He thought the coffee from the machine wasn't half bad; he blamed the _agita_ he had on the stress of the day, not the coffee itself.

He watched Dr. House randomly throw medication at his patient, hoping something would work before the poor slob dropped dead. It was only twenty minutes into the episode, so they had a ways to go.

This was not a good thing to watch while inside a hospital. At all.

"Mind if I change this?" Jerry asked. When he got no answer, he turned to see that Max had dropped off. That was okay. Somebody or other would wake him up periodically, especially when they found him a room, so he should get sleep when he could. This looked nothing like typical Max sleep. Usually Teresa or Jerry himself would go check on him to find him half on/half off the bed. Once, Teresa had had to come down to the living room and get Jerry to show him his son because he wouldn't believe her otherwise: Max was face down in a comic book on his carpet, only one foot actually on the bed, the covers tangled beneath him. This wouldn't be unusual if he hadn't started out on the bed, in a relatively normal position.

But that was normal for Max. What Jerry was looking at at the moment, however, was the opposite of normal. There was his youngest, on his back, broken leg elevated and all manner of tubes making it hard for him to shift position. It was wrong, but it could have been so much worse.

Alex had thought it was worse. She'd been sure he was dead. Jerry imagined it was easy to go there, for her at least. But that thing she said about Justin saving him. _That_ was just ridiculous.

He couldn't exactly tell Alex that there was no such thing as wizard healers, though. Not really. They existed, supposedly, but as far as he knew, there hadn't been a legitimate one for a couple hundred years. As with everything else, there were millions of fakes. No one ever stood up to scrutiny.

So to have his eighteen year old suddenly turn out to have healing powers? Jerry wasn't about to bet on it. No, they'd just all gotten off lucky this time.

5.

Because of the weather, business had been painfully slow that day, and Jerry and Teresa had been in the middle of closing when all hell had broken loose. Now, Teresa remembered that she hadn't counted out the register or shut it down.

_Dammit_, she thought, resigning herself to leaving the kids on the couch for a few minutes. The three of them looked so tiny and scared, and there was a Max-shaped void in the room. What she wouldn't give to see Alex shoving Max off the sofa or Justin trying to get him to pay attention to something on the History Channel. Or Harper making him stand up in one of her dresses so she could hem it.

She thought about that, and then made a mental note to work on some new house rules (No more enforced cross-dressing! We don't shove our brothers off our sofas, Alex!) as she headed downstairs.

The register gave her a hard time of course, refusing to shut down. And the cash drawer came up 28 cents short the first time she counted it and 28 cents over the second. Then it was 95 cents over. Clearly, this was not the time for math. Jerry could puzzle over it in the morning, or better yet, make Justin or Alex figure it out. It would take their minds off things, since there was no way they'd have school. Not that she'd let them go after what they'd all been through, that was. She was keeping them home until Monday if she could get away with it. She wanted them where she could see them.

Justin was the only one still awake when she got back. He was perched on the edge of the sofa with Alex's legs behind him. Alex, for a tiny girl had really managed to fill the the whole space. Harper, _pobrecita_, was curled into a ball in the chair, her arms wrapped around a throw pillow.

"How 'bout some eggs?" she whispered. Justin shook his head. This, she didn't like. He hadn't eaten since lunch. But, she figured, the second he smelled bacon frying, he'd come around. And the other two would wake up and take a little nourishment, too before they went upstairs to bed.

She threw some onions and leftover potatoes into a pan and let them sizzle and looked over to see Alex's nose start to twitch like a rabbit's, but Justin continued to stare blankly at his infomercial. She tossed bacon into another pan and that took care of Harper.

"What time is it?" she asked, stretching out and dropping the pillow.

Teresa checked the microwave. "1:30," she said. "Isn't Carson Daly on, Justin?" Anything had to be better than what he had on. She was sure that mineral cosmetics could be fascinating in the right context, but this was not it.

"Huh?" Justin asked. "Yeah, okay." He got up to switch the channel. Alex was probably on top of the remote. He caught the tail end of Jimmy Fallon, whom Justin liked but Max just about idolized. Justin got up and switched channels again.

"Hey," Teresa said. "I like that band!" She'd never seen the band that was playing before in her life but she knew he'd call her on it and any distraction was better than no distraction.

"Okay," he said, and changed it back without argument. He was going to be a hard nut to crack, but she _would_ wipe that blank look off his face.

"Ow," Alex said, starting to sit up. Justin got out of the way so she could swing her legs over and sit up.

"I'll get you some aspirins, _mami_," Teresa said. "But come and eat."

Alex had a hard time getting up, so Justin helped, leading Alex to go "Ow-ow-ow-ow..." but then stop suddenly once she was vertical. She cocked her head to one side and rotated her shoulder, looking puzzled.

"Oh yeah," she said. "I _forgot_. Thanks, bro." After that, she walked easily to the table and cut herself a huge piece of omelet and helped herself to probably a third of the bacon. Everybody stared at her.

"What?" she asked around a mouthful of bacon. "I_ told_ you he could do that. Why do you look surprised now?"

"I didn't do _any_thing," Justin said.

"Okay," Alex said, reaching for the ketchup. "If it makes you feel better, you didn't just fix up my back and you totally didn't, like, put all the bones in Max's skull back together—"

"Alex, if you don't _shut up_—" Justin said.

"I don't know what your problem is," Alex continued, taking another bite and continuing with her mouth full. "You're probably a lock to win the competition now. I mean, me and Max can't exactly top miracle working." She took a second to swallow. "I'd have to make _David Copperfield_ disappear or something—"

Justin turned and went upstairs. Harper had been watching all of this with a fork poised half-way to her mouth. She put it down.

"Alex!" she said. She started to get up.

"No, Harper," Teresa said. "You stay. Get some food in you before Alex takes it all. _I'll_ go after him."

She was, as expected, faced with her son's closed door. She knocked, then tried the knob. It was locked.

"Should've seen that coming," she said. "Papi? C'mon, open up."

Nothing.

"Talk to me,"she said. She counted to twenty. "Okay. You know where to find me." She turned around to theatrically stomp her feet so that it would sound like she was walking away.

Nothing.

So she walked away for real, checking over her shoulder every few steps and listening for the telltale click of the door opening, but she didn't hear it.

6.

Justin Russo, as the eldest, had an overdeveloped sense of responsibility and when the other two got into trouble—real trouble, not detention or grounded or something—it felt like an ogre was sitting on him. And if anyone knew what that felt like...

And this was undoubtedly the worst thing that had ever happened. _That's really saying something_, he thought.

And he couldn't shake the idea that his little brother still might die. Head injuries were no joke, even if they didn't look like much at first, they could spell doom. Horrible things could happen later. Clots could form. Oxygen deprivation. Loss of motor function. Blindness. Memory loss.

Alex just didn't get it, and he couldn't think of a way to make her understand how serious this was. She was sitting downstairs right now, stuffing her face, thinking everything was hunky-dory despite all evidence to the contrary.

Actually he sort of envied that. Obliviousness was highly underrated.

Because Justin didn't save his brother from _anything_, no matter what Alex said and it was so beyond irresponsible of her to put the thought into anyone else's head. What if people believed her? What if she decided, for the good of mankind, that she had to tell people? She had a knack for doing stuff like that, after all. And what if some poor person showed up, talking about how he or she had stage four cancer and a family to support? What would happen when they found out that Justin could do nothing for that person?

Then not only would he not have been able to help that person, but he would also have X number of people thinking he was a fraud. That they mislead people on purpose. What then? Did Alex have a snappy answer for that?

He tried to slow his breathing down, because he felt a panic attack coming on. He curled into a ball on his bed and waited for it to pass.

There was another knock on the door. Justin thought that he might've fallen asleep for a while because it was 3:30 and it had been barely 2:00 last he'd checked.

"Hey," his dad said. "You still up?" Justin got up and opened his door.

"Did I wake you?"

"Nah," he lied. "How's Max?"

"They're gonna run more tests in the morning, but so far, he's okay," Dad said. "He wants ice cream. And salami."

Justin nodded.

"And the nurses think he's the cutest thing they ever saw," Dad said.

For no good reason he could think of, Justin picked that moment to burst into tears. After holding it in the whole night, thinking that if he didn't lose it when his mother tried to get in before, that he would be able to keep himself together, his body decided that it didn't want to anymore.

His dad did all the right things, grabbing him so he could bury his face in his father's chest, smelling the usual mix of Old Spice deodorant, oregano, and pepperoncini.

"Yeah, I know," Dad said, squeezing him harder than was strictly comfortable. "I know." Justin was sure that his dad _didn't_ know, but Justin felt a little bit better all the same. Just a little. After a while, he his dad let go of him and he was able to use the hem of his t-shirt to clean his face off a little bit. Then he laughed.

"What?" Dad asked.

Justin told his father he'd been thinking about ice cream and salami. He could just see Max sitting up in bed, taking alternating bites of each.

"Long as he stays away from _comakus pancakus_, huh?" Justin said.

"I have his wand," Dad said. "And if he says anything weird, we can just blame it on the concussion."

"Yeah," Justin said. "I guess that works."

"Why don't you get some sleep?" Dad asked. "I'll go check on the others and hit the hay myself."

"I could sleep," Justin said. He still wasn't sure that he could, but he'd give it a shot. There would be a lot to deal with in the morning.

TBC


End file.
